In THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, director Petra Costa’s camera flows through the sleek and spacious rooms of the Palácio da Alvorada, Brazil’s presidential residence designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, in slow travelling shots. As the camera traipses around the empty, noiseless halls and doorways, it becomes clear that the stillness and quietude of these … Continue reading Alvorada
ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE succeeds as a primer on visual literacy, always questioning its images, asking what they omit, how they are structured, how the form makes claims on the visual information it contains.
SUMMER OF SOUL assumes a natural position alongside a group of the essential American music documentaries.
While an imperfect effort, DEATH ON THE STREETS is an interesting outside-in angle on a forgotten America. Heart and honesty make up for lack of polish, and it treats its subject with uncomfortable, unrelenting respect that drives home the lack of quick fixes and easy answers.
The Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in far northeastern Russia is far removed from the political, social, linguistic, and cosmopolitan realities of Moscow or St Petersburg. In this environment, a local cinema culture has flourished, and Dmitry Davydov’s SCARECROW (PUGALO) brings Sakha cinema to an international audience at IFFR.
SHIVA BABY, the feature debut from director Emma Seligman, is a whirlwind of anxiety where a conflict between the personal and the familial erupts at a shiva while surrounded by relatives, community, and salmon and cream cheese bagels.
GUILT, THEN ABSOLUTION? is a diverse program about sin and reconciliation, boasting a variety of genres and screening as part of the postponed 2020 Edinburgh Short Film Festival.
AFTER LOVE is the debut film of British-Pakistani director Aleem Khan, and beautiful exploration of the complex and complicated emotions on top of raw grief and loss.
If there’s one running theme of the absolute tyre fire that was the year 2020, it’s that we always need ways to escape. As such, it’s suitable that this block of the long-postponed 2020 Edinburgh Short Film Festival focuses on this very topic.
COWBOYS is a touching story about accepting who your children are, that uses the masculine norms of the cinematic depiction of cowboys to situate its discussion about gender identity and gender presentation.
